This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Saturday: Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. If Punxsutawney Phil
doesn’t see his shadow this morning, he is telling us that he follows the
Chinese calendar and that spring starts early. On the Chinese calendar,
equinoxes and solstices occur in the middle of their respective seasons. In
order for the vernal equinox to occur in the middle of spring, spring must
start on February 3 or 4, depending on the year. Thus, if Phil doesn’t see his
shadow, legend is that spring will start on February 3 or 4 as on the Chinese
calendar. If Phil sees his shadow, he is telling us he agrees with the western
calendar and that there will be six more weeks of winter meaning spring will
start near March 20.

Sunday: Are you going to watch the super bowl tonight? I
know some of you don’t think the bowl is so super. After all, half the night
the bowl is tipped upside down, spilling out all of its contents. But don’t
just focus on the functionality of the bowl. Think about how it inspires people
all across the world to sit on the green grass and look into the dark blue
early evening sky. In Mongolia, participants in the super bowl are known as
gods. An Arabian story says the super bowl is a coffin, one that can even hold
once powerful broncos. I encourage you go outside tonight at about 8 p.m.,
after whatever unimportant thing you have been doing since 3:30 p.m. Look low
in the north-northwest sky and watch the super bowl, also known as the Big
Dipper, balancing on the end of its handle, proudly displaying its large bowl.

Monday: Mercury is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s
length above the west-southwest horizon at 6 p.m. Look for it soon because it
is rapidly moving toward the glare of the setting Sun.

Tuesday: Winter is the best season for finding bright stars.
And if you only want to set aside a few minutes, 10 p.m. tonight just might be
the best time because the winter hexagon is due south. Starting at the bottom,
find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, two and a half fists above
the south horizon. Going clockwise, Procyon (6th brightest star visible from
Washington state) is about two and a half fists to the upper left of Sirius.
Pollux (12th brightest) is about two and a half fists above Procyon. Capella (4th
brightest) is about two and a half fists to the upper right of Procyon and
close to straight overhead. Going back to Sirius at the bottom, Rigel (5th
brightest) about two and a half fists to the upper right of Sirius. Aldebaran
(9th brightest) is about three fists above Rigel. Betelgeuse (7th brightest) is
in the center of the hexagon. Adhara (16th brightest) is a little more than a
fist below Sirius and Castor (17th brightest) is right above Pollux. That’s
nine of the 17 brightest stars visible in the northern United States in one part
of the sky.

Wednesday: Jupiter is six and a half fists above the south
horizon at 10 p.m., surrounded by the winter hexagon.

Thursday: The morning sky is filled with bright planets. At
6:30 a.m., Venus is one fist above the southeast horizon, Saturn is two and a
half fists above the south horizon, and Mars is three fists above the southwest
horizon.

Friday: The good news is the days are getting longer and the
nights are getting shorter. The better news is the farther north you go in the
United States, the longer the days get. Here in Ellensburg, there is one and a
half more hours of daylight than on the first day of winter. In the southern
part of the US, there is only 35 more minutes of sunlight. On the North Pole,
the day length has gone from zero hours to zero hours in the past month and a
half. If you’d like to have your own fun with day lengths and other time
questions, go to http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunrise.html.

The positional information in this column about stars and
planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information
about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Saturday: Draco Malfoy makes an appearance in all seven books
of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps you’ve heard of these. But, the
constellation Draco the dragon makes an appearance in the sky every night. It
is a circumpolar constellation as viewed from Ellensburg meaning it never goes
below the horizon. The head of the dragon is one fist held upright and at arm’s
length above due north at 9:30 p.m. Eltanin, the brightest star in the
constellation, is at the lower left-hand corner of the trapezoid-shaped head of
Draco.

Sunday: Mercury is about one fist above the west-southwest
horizon at 5:30 p.m. Your homework assignment is to try to find it in the sky
this week.

Monday: At 7 a.m., Saturn is two and a half fists above due
south and Mars, the reddish planet, is three fists above the southwest horizon
and a half a fist above the bluish-white star Spica.

Tuesday: Venus is about a fist to the left of a very “old”
crescent moon low in the southeast sky at 7 a.m. The age of the moon is defined
as how many days the visible moon is past new. The new moon is zero days old. A
waxing crescent is one to six days old. A full moon is about 14 days old. This
morning’s moon is 27 days old meaning it will be new again in two days.

Wednesday: Jupiter is five fists above the southeast horizon
at 8 p.m.

Thursday: Let’s review three important sets of three cats.
There’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody of Josie and the Pussycats. Felix, Tom, and
Sylvester from old time cartoons. And, if you want to get away from the
mind-numbing effects of television, there’s Leo the lion, Leo Minor, and Lynx
in the night sky. Leo is by far the most prominent of these three
constellations. Its brightest star called Regulus is nearly four fists above
the east-southeast horizon at 11 p.m. The backwards question mark-shaped head
of Leo is above Regulus and the trapezoid-shaped body is to the left of it. Leo
Minor consists of a few dim stars right above Leo. Pretty wimpy. The long dim
constellation spans from just above Leo Minor to nearly straight overhead. You
and fellow stargazers won’t need to wear a long tail or ears for hats to enjoy
these stellar cats.

Friday: Did you do your homework assignment from Sunday? What.
Your dog ate it? No, your dog did not eat the planet Mercury. If you have been
having trouble, tonight is your lucky night. At 5:30, Mercury is about a half a
fist to the left of a very “young”, one day old crescent moon. You DO remember
how to determine the age of the moon, don’t you? The moon was new a little over
a day ago so this evening’s moon is 1.3 days old low in the west-southwest sky.

The positional information in this column about stars and
planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information
about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Saturday: Who
can forget that memorable song by Three Dog Constellations Night, “The sky is
black. The stars are white. Together we learn to find the light.” Well, maybe
it didn’t go like that. This is good because not all stars are white. Most
stars are too dim to notice a color. But, the stars in the constellation Orion
provide a noticeable contrast. Betelgeuse, five fists held upright and at arm’s
length above the south horizon at 10:30 p.m. is a red giant. Rigel, the bright
star about two fists to the lower right of Betelgeuse, is a blue giant.

By the
way, the three dog constellations are Canis Major, the greater dog; Canis
Minor, the lesser dog; and Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. Canis Major
contains Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: Just
back from a long engagement in the evening sky, Venus makes its return to the
morning sky. Venus is one fist above the southeast horizon at 7 a.m. At this
same time, Saturn is two and a half fists above the south horizon

Monday: Are
you looking for a vacation spot close by? One that is not to hot and not too
cold. One that is “just right”. One year ago, astronomers discovered that the
star Tau Ceti, one of our closest neighbor at 12 light years away, may have
five planets. One of those planets orbiting the Sun-like star is in the
so-called Goldilocks Zone where the temperature is just right for having liquid
water. You’ll want to do some research before you travel there. Tau Ceti is two
and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 7 p.m. For more
information about the discovery, go to http://goo.gl/xcv0dl.

Tuesday:
You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one
every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is
circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always
above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the
stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only
about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual
luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each
at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind
boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above due
north at 10 p.m.

Wednesday:
The moon rises just after midnight tonight in the east-southeast sky. By 12:30
a.m., the bright star Spica will be visible about a pinky width to the lower
right of the moon and Mars will be a half a fist to the upper left. But as the
night moves on, you’ll see the moon moving eastward, away from Spica and Mars.
This is evidence that the moon is closer to the Earth than either Mars or
Spica. The closer an object is to the Earth, the more its actually motion
affects where we see it in the sky. Stars are so far away that nearly 100% of
the motion we observe is because the earth is moving. It would take a few
nights of careful observation to see that Mars has moved with respect to the
stars. Of course, you know that the moon is closer than the planets and the
planets are closer than the nighttime stars. (Don’t you?) But it is helpful to
have easily observable evidence.

Thursday: Are
you interested in participating in astronomy research? You don’t need to go
back to school. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting a fake
degree from an online university. The scientists working on the High Resolution
Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter would like your input on which objects they should target for close-up
pictures. While you may think the scientists are just trying to build interest
in their project by having people look at pretty pictures, there is a real
scientific benefit to having many eyes searching for interesting targets. There
aren’t enough scientists to carefully inspect all of the low power images. And,
surprisingly, computers are not nearly as effective as people in making
educated judgments of images. So, go to http://www.uahirise.org/ and click on
the HiWish button. You’ll be on your way to suggesting close-up targets for
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Friday: Jupiter
is six and a half fists above the south horizon at 11 p.m.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Saturday: One
Family Affair explored the trials of well-to-do civil engineer and bachelor
Bill Davis as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his
luxury New York City apartment (as described on Wikipedia). Another family
affair explores how a well-to-do Solar System raises its constituents from
birth, through growth, change, and death. Just like Buffy and Jody started off
full of energy, planets start out hot and molten. Cissy got wrinkles as she
approached middle age; planets become cratered as they age. We watched the TV
show “Family Affair” to learn about a nontraditional Manhattan family grew and
changed. Astronomers study other planets to learn how the Solar System will
evolve. For more information about this Solar System Family Affair, go to http://goo.gl/G029D. Jupiter,
the dad of the Solar System family, is about three fists held upright and at
arm’s length above due east at 7 p.m.

Sunday:
How do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal
shelter, care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle
of a star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a
minute. Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead,
they study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and
piece together the information from those different stars. What they do is like
studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different
two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the
constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of
star life.

First,
find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation
Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short-lived
existence, is three and a half fists above the south horizon at 10 p.m. About
one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The
middle “star” is really a star-forming region called the Orion nebula. There
you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and a little
below Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright
as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the
right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star.
Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life
that started out life a bit larger than the Sun.

Monday: Mars
is about four fists above the south horizon and Saturn is about two fists above
the east-southeast horizon at 6 a.m.

Tuesday: Jupiter
is a half a fist to the upper left of the moon in the eastern sky at 7 p.m.

Wednesday:
It’s a bird. No, it’s a plane. No, it’s a super moon. During this full moon,
the moon is at perigee, meaning it is at its closest to the earth. And when
items are closer to us, they appear larger. So a super moon is really a close
moon, a moon that leads to extra high tides and brighter night skies.

Thursday:
January is the coldest month of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace.
Fornax the furnace is one fist above due south at 7 p.m.

Friday: What
you see with the naked eye isn’t all that can be seen. While astronomers can
learn a lot from observing the sky in the visible wavelengths, many celestial
objects radiate more light, and more information, in wavelengths such as radio,
microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray. In 2009, NASA launched
the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to study objects that radiate in
the infrared range such as asteroids, cool dim stars, and luminous galaxies.
For an interesting comparison of how different wavelengths show different
aspects of a galaxy, go to http://goo.gl/nvuax. If it weren’t for infrared
telescopes such as WISE, astronomers would not know about the significant
amount of dust in galaxies.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Saturday: If the Sun looks big today, your eyes are not playing
tricks on you. The Earth is at perihelion at about 4 a.m. today. If you dig out
your Greek language textbook, you’ll see that peri- means “in close proximity”
and helios means “Sun”. So, perihelion is when an object is closest to the Sun
in its orbit, about 1.5 million miles closer than its average distance of 93
million miles. Since it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere now, the seasonal
temperature changes must not be caused by the Earth getting farther from and
closer to the Sun. Otherwise, we’d have summer when the Earth is closest to the
Sun. The seasons are caused by the angle of the sunlight hitting the Earth. In
the winter, sunlight hits the Earth at a very low angle, an angle far from
perpendicular or straight up and down. This means that a given “bundle” of
sunlight is spread out over a large area and does not warm the surface as much
as the same bundle in the summer.

Sunday: Venus is less than half a fist held upright and at
arm’s length above the southwest horizon at 5 p.m. By the end of the week, it
will be lost in the glare of the Sun for most viewers.

Monday: Jupiter is nearly three fists above the east horizon
at 7 p.m. It is in an area of the sky with many bright stars. Pollux and Castor
is a fist to the left of Jupiter. Procyon is about two fists below it and
Betelgeuse is two fists to the right of it.

Tuesday: Orion stands tall in the southern sky. At 10:30
p.m., the middle of Orion’s belt is four fists above due south. And talk about
belt tightening! Alnilam, the middle star in the belt, is losing mass at a rate
of about 100 thousand trillion tons a day. That’s a 1 followed by 17 zeros tons
per day.

Wednesday: Do you typically get eight hours sleep? Perfect.
I asked you to look at something at 10:30 last night. Now I’ll ask you to look
at two things at 6:30 this morning. Saturn is about two fists above the
south-southwest horizon and Mars is nearly four fists above the south horizon.
Don’t confuse Mars with Spica, a star of similar brightness nearby. Mars is
reddish and higher above the horizon.

Thursday: Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you
promise not to tell? Whoa oh, oh. The Beatles certainly didn’t write this song
about the Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona. Astronomers are studying this
50,000-year-old impact to learn more about our planet’s violent history as well
as the physics of impacts throughout the solar system. If you’d like to be let
in on some of these secrets, go to http://goo.gl/sqbBe.

Friday: Have you ever looked down on the ground and spotted
a penny? In Yakima? While you were standing in Ellensburg? If you have, then
you may be able to see the star Hamal as more than just a point of light. It
has an angular diameter that can be directly measured from Earth. Hamal, the
brightest star in the constellation Aries the ram, has the same angular
diameter as a penny 37 miles away. (For comparison, the moon is about half the
diameter of a penny held at arm’s length.) Hamal is three and a half fists
above due west at 11 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and
planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information
about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.